


Spick and Span

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [124]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 20:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17433296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: If Dot’s on shift, she always counts them back in again. What matters is that they all come back, not the mess they leave on the floor.





	Spick and Span

“Supper’s in the oven, love.” Dot Morris pulled on a hand-knitted woolly hat, slipped on her warm coat and picked up her bag. “Your games kit’s on the drier. It’ll be ready for tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Nan, you’re a star.” Her 16-year-old grandson looked up from his laptop and flashed her a bright smile.

Rudy had lived with her for three years, since his mother and father had died in a head on collision between their Nissan Micra and an oil tanker on the M4. The driver had been too busy texting to notice that the traffic in front of him had stopped. He’d swerved at the last minute, lost control and crashed through the central reservation, killing Dot’s daughter and son-in-law and another couple in a red Astra, turning both cars into in one crumpled mass of metal. A six-year prison sentence for causing death by dangerous driving had been little consolation for Dot and her teenage grandson.

She dropped a kiss onto his short, curly black hair, the legacy of his Jamaican-born father. “Curfew at 11pm, remember.”

He grinned at her. “You can trust me.”

Dot knew she could. Rudy was a good boy. She’d always been able to trust him. She’d gone back to work six weeks ago, and they were both enjoying the extra money that her job brought in. The new Government offices only a half a mile from their maisonette had been a godsend for Dot. She’d had to go through security vetting, but that hadn’t been a problem. Dot had never even had a parking ticket and Rudy hadn’t been in any trouble, either. At 65, Dot never expected to find getting a job easy, but her friend Norman had tipped her off that cleaners were needed, particularly for the unpopular night shift. She applied and got the job. She worked two weeks of nights, followed by a week on the day shift. The money was good, and it only took her ten minutes to walk to work.

The black-uniformed guard on the gate smiled as she showed him her pass. They went through the same routine every day, and it never occurred to Dot not to hold out the piece of plastic with her name and photo on. He had a job to do, same as her.

“How’s the little ‘un, Joe?” His three-year-old daughter had been down with a nasty cough when she’d last been on nights.

“Bounced right back,” he said. “It’s her birthday on Saturday.”

Dot laughed. “You’d better borrow some of Captain Ryan’s lads for crowd control. You’ll need ‘em.”

Joe grimaced. “Tell me about it… Katy’s was bad enough. Give me this job any day.”

The uniforms and the guns had made her uneasy at first, but she had quickly realised that the lads who worked on security were mostly a nice enough bunch. There were a couple of awkward sods, but you got them in any job. The soldiers had scared her a bit at first, but Norman had assured her they were all right, so she’d just done what she’d done in any job: smiled and got on with her cleaning. Her metal cart, loaded with sprays, cloths, wipes, brushes and mops, seemed to make her invisible to most people, and Dot was happy with that. She could blend into the background and get on with what she liked best – people watching.

The offices, the showers and the rest rooms were Dot’s domain. Tomasz did the corridors and the cavernous control room on his ride-on cleaner, with its big, whirring brushes that swept and polished. He started his rounds at 6am and they’d usually have a cup of tea together before Dot knocked off when she was on nights.

Dot entered the building through the internal car park, using her pass to get in. The cleaners’ room was on the ground floor. She hung her coat up, put on her knee-length green tabard, then checked her cart had all the supplies she would need for her shift. She’d seen the Big Boss’s pride and joy in the carpark, so she’d leave his office until he’d gone home. The professor’s Hilux was nowhere to be seen, nor were the black Range Rovers that the military team used.

Despite the strict ‘ask no questions’ policy, you’d have to be blind, deaf and very stupid not to know that the Anomaly Research Centre did the sort of work that never got into the newspapers. The professor used to work at the university, but now he spent all his time in the ARC. He was a bit gruff at times, but Dot had soon learned that provided she put everything back in exactly the same place once she’d dusted, they got on just fine. A mug of tea – strong, dash of milk, one sugar - always worked wonders with him.

His assistant, Stephen, was an easy lad to like. He always had a nice word for her. She liked all the science team. Connor reminded her of Rudy’s friend Jez who spent all his time taking computers apart and putting them back together again so they worked better. Rudy and Jez had given her a tablet for Christmas, and much to Dot’s surprise, she’d soon worked out how to use it to read the news and look through Ravelry for any knitting patterns that took her fancy.

Abby was a nice lass, even though Dot couldn’t entirely fathom her taste in clothes. They’d sometimes chat over a cuppa when Dot was cleaning the small kitchen adjoining the break room. Provided she kept on top of that every shift, she usually managed to avoid the microwave turning into a public health hazard.

The soldiers had their own rest room next to the armoury, although they often shared with the science team. On Dot’s first shift, she’d arrived just as an alarm had gone off, and she’d seen a bunch of hard-eyed professionals stream past her, armed to the teeth. They’d jumped into their vehicles and left the building at high speed. They’d trailed back in eight hours later, just as her shift was finishing. They’d been filthy, some of them covered in a mess of mud and blood, but they’d been in good spirits, laughing and joking, apologising to both Dot and Tomasz for the mess they’d left everywhere.

Dot had smiled back and stayed on an extra quarter of an hour to dish up some much-needed tea and coffee. After that, she soon started to get to know the lads, and by the end of the first week, she’d successfully bonded with young Darren over photos of his little girl and was well on the way to getting to know the rest of them.

For the first hour of her shift, Dot concentrated on the soldiers’ bunkroom. It wasn’t often she had the sleeping quarters to herself, and although they were a tidy lot, she couldn’t pass up the chance to give the whole area a good bottoming. She moved from there to the small, en suite rooms that the science team used when they had to sleep over. She was four hours into her shift when she heard booted feet clattering into the atrium. As she always did when the team came back from a shout – six weeks in and she knew the terminology now – Dot pushed her cart along to the recreation room to put the kettle on and get the biscuits out.

She went out into the corridor in time to see Professor Cutter and Captain Ryan making their way up the winding ramp to the first floor, while Connor promptly plonked himself down in front of the bank of screens and started to talk to Ranjit, the duty technician. Ranjit was a nice lad. His younger brother was in the same year as Rudy at school. She wasn’t close enough to overhear the conversation between Connor and Ranjit, but Connor seemed cheerful enough, so Dot took that as a good sign.

The rest of the soldiers would have made for the armoury to check their weapons back in, so Dot pushed her cart that way, hoping she’d be able to do a head count before getting on with her job.

Darren – known to the others as Kermit – came out of the armoury first, looking too cheerful for any of the team to have been hurt. He saw her and smiled. “All fine, Mrs M. Nothing more than a few cuts and bruises. Nowt to write home about.”

She smiled at him. “Kettle’s on, love. You’ve time to catch a shower first.”

He looked down at the dirt on his clothes and boots and grinned. “Hope you’ve not cleaned in there yet.”

“I know to leave ‘em until last when you lot are out on a job.”

An hour later, she’d made tea for them, fetched a packet of biscuits from her stash, and checked that they really were all right. It was time to tackle the showers now.

Dot pushed her trolley along the corridor, humming to herself.

They were all alive and well. That was what mattered, not any mess they’d left behind in the showers.


End file.
